


Us

by ScarletteStar1



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Emotional, F/F, Fluff, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Jemily - Freeform, Lesbian, Love, Prentiss/Jareau, Romance, Short, Snapshots, mention of mulder and Scully just because nerd..., photograph
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-09 19:35:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17412965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/pseuds/ScarletteStar1
Summary: From the moment Agents JJ Jareau and Emily Prentiss meet, they are building something mysterious and complicated. . .  These are their stories, told in little snapshots of time.Lengths and ratings will vary...  told in no particular order...  mostly canon compliant, with my head canon that is...





	1. Prologue: Photograph of Us

**Author's Note:**

> "They've made a statue of us  
> and put it on a mountain top,  
> now tourists come and stare at us  
> blow bubbles with their gum,  
> take photographs of fun,  
> have fun!" -- Us, Regina Spektor.

She looks back and it’s all a blur. She looks back and it’s like flipping through a bunch of photographs. Moments all have meaning. Moments all have feeling.

“When I first met you, I thought you were a Barbie doll,” Emily says, or maybe she imagines saying it at some random date way in the future. How would JJ respond? Would she smile and drop her eyes? Would she take Emily’s hand and pull her off into another room? Would their laughter blend into the heat of kisses? 

It is impossible to say.

There is truth in words, like there is truth in a photograph or in any other work of art. But it is subjective.

How do you get from seeing someone as something plastic, like a doll, to watching them sleep and feeling like you will stop breathing if they so much as deviate for one instant in their bodily rhythm? How do you go from looking at a photograph of something colorful and fun, to knowing your pulse exists in another’s form?

She lies awake and wonders that.

She doesn't know when it changed. She only knows it has. 


	2. One: The Naming of Things

“JJ, huh? Is that short for something?”

“Yeah. My first name is Jennifer. Last name Jareau. So...” she shrugs and smiles. 

“Anyone ever call you ‘Jenny’?” 

“Not if they want me to answer them. No.” 

“Jen?”

“Nope.”

“So just JJ then?”

“Yup.”

“Noted,” Emily says. She walks away grinning like a fool and not knowing why.


	3. Two: Secret

Gideon scowls. “Do your job, Prentiss,” he snaps. “I’m not a babysitter.” He storms out of the bullpen, presumably to complain about her to SSA Hotchner. 

JJ watches the scene unfold. Emily’s eyes are wide. JJ hasn’t noticed if they are green or brown but now she can tell clearly they are a hazel kaleidoscope. Shades of forest and earth overlap, shift, and flicker. “Don’t let him get under your skin,” she offers. Emily looks at her and rolls her eyes as if to pretend it hadn’t bothered her. 

“What is his deal anyway?”

JJ bites her lip and shrugs, but the crestfallen slope of Emily’s shoulders seems to wound something in her own cage of bones. She steps even closer and lowers her voice. “Between you and me, he had a thing for the agent who you replaced. 

“Greenaway?”

“Yeah. They were a complicated story. But that’s totally classified.” 

“Really?” Emily says and looks off in the direction in which Gideon walked. “Well.”

“I swear I’m not a gossip,” JJ says. She seems flustered. “Please don’t repeat it to anyone. I just... it’s... well, he’d be an ass to anyone in your position is all.” 

“No I get it. And it’ll be our secret,” Emily says. She smiles a little and pats JJ ‘s arm. “Thanks.”

JJ goes back to her office and puts the files she’s holding down on her desk. She leans on the edge of her desk. She and Emily now have a secret.


	4. Three: Starless Sky

They are someplace cold. 

Prentiss hasn’t quite mastered the art of packing the go-bag yet, so she doesn’t have nearly enough layers. She has a thick wool coat, but under it, her clothes are thin. She shivers. 

“Here,” JJ says. “Take my scarf.” They are walking back to the hotel. 

“It’s okay. I’m fine,” Emily tries to decline the offer. 

“No you’re not. You’re freezing!” JJ insists. She pulls it off of her own neck and loops it around Emily. 

“But what about you?” 

“I’m wearing like seventeen layers, and I have an extra scarf in my bag,” JJ says with a hint of a smile. “Plus, I was born and raised in a climate like this. My blood is acclimated.” 

“I see. Well, I was raised all over the place, but I would have to say I prefer the heat. Italy was great.” In a single moment of silence she remembers Rome and sun and white cliffs and sea, but she finds herself eager to return to the cold, standing wherever she is with JJ. “Do you think it’ll snow?” 

“Nope. It’s too cold for snow.” JJ looks around up in the sky. It’s dark. A thick blanket of clouds have covered any stars they might have seen. With her head thrown back to look up at the sky, a little patch of bare flesh on her neck is exposed. Emily feels a momentary pang of guilt for wearing the scarf. She thinks JJ looks beautiful like that, looking up in the dark, her pale skin luminous as the moon. Emily swallows back all the words that rush into her own throat. 

“It’s been a long day,” she mumbles at last. “Thanks for the scarf. I’ll get the hang of packing on the fly eventually, I guess.”

“You’re welcome, Emily,” JJ says. When she speaks, the warmth of her words comes out in puffs of vapor into the frigid air. Emily watches as her name floats up into the starless sky and becomes lost, committed forever in the dark. 

They continue walking and arrive at the hotel. In the lobby, Emily makes to remove the scarf to return it to JJ. “Keep it for now. You’ll need it tomorrow.” 

They are someplace cold. Too cold for snow. 

Emily goes to her room. She takes off her coat and her shoes, but leaves JJ’s scarf twisted around her neck. She touches it. It is soft as the underside of a kitten’s neck. She brings the material to her face and inhales the floral spice of JJ’s perfume mixed with a shadow of coffee from the cafe they had been in earlier. 

They are someplace cold. Too cold for snow. 

Emily flops onto her bed, scarf still on her. She imagines the delicate cloud of her name, said in JJ’s breath, floating up into the frozen, starless sky.


	5. Four: Damaged

She looks like a damaged Barbie doll. Like a kid took her and played with her a little too hard. Her hair is tangled and her makeup is smeared all over her face. She’s shaking. Emily watches the EMT shine the light across her eyes in the back of the ambulance. 

The team hunkers down in the Hankle house to search for clues. 

“How are you not affected by all of this?” She practically snaps at Emily. 

“I guess I am good at compartmentalizing,” Emily replies. She says it steadily enough, but a part of her is shaking even harder than JJ is right now. The Hankle house has a smell of men. It is a plain smell, unadorned by any sort of dryer sheets or scented candles. It is a leathery, salty, smokey smell and it is making Emily sick, to be honest. 

Later, JJ goes to the bathroom to clean up. Emily comes up behind her, startles her and JJ draws her gun. “Fuck,” Emily hisses as JJ lowers her gun. 

“I’m sorry,” JJ says.

“No,” Emily says slowly. “I’m sorry.” It’s all she can do to tear her eyes away from the blood staining JJ’s shirt. JJ takes such pride in a crisp, white blouse, but now she is rumpled, messed up, covered in blood. 

Emily wants to wrap JJ in the safety and comfort of her arms. She wants to kiss the top of her head and smooth down her hair and get a warm cloth to wash her face. She wants to make her a hot tea and tuck her up in bed and hold her and call her baby. She wants to promise her she’s safe now. She wants to hold her. She just wants to hold her. Fuck, she wants so bad to fucking hold her until everything else in the world stops and is quiet and the two of them can just feel fucking safe. She wants to touch JJ’s bottom lip with her thumb and tilt her face up so she can look deep in those round, blue eyes as she kisses her. Oh, god help her, she fucking wants to kiss her and she almost just lost her and never got the chance. 

She wants all of this and she wants more. 

She wants to care for all the damaged bits of the blonde before her- the ones seen, and the ones invisible to the eye. 

It all aches inside her chest in a dull, horrible way. 

Or maybe the smell of the Hankle house is just making her nauseous. 

For weeks after they return home, Emily wakes at night and can’t go back to sleep for the same image of JJ playing through her head. It was in the dark of the barn, when they had found her, cowering with her gun, a pack of dead dogs on the ground in front of her. “I had to. . . I had to shoot them,” she had wept. This image tortures Emily for weeks in the dark of her own room. It was almost as though in witnessing the tremor of JJ’s voice, and the panic in her eyes, Emily had watched the dogs tear apart the woman too, like she was also scared for her life. 

So much for compartmentalizing. 

She lies there in her bed, every night, for weeks on end, trying to open up a place inside of herself where she can put that memory to rest. She searches in vain. Sleep eludes her. 

Finally, one night she picks up her phone and dials. 

JJ answers on the second ring. “You’re not sleeping either?” She says. 

“Hi. No.” Emily says. She lies on her back and smiles into the midnight of her room. “Why are you up?”

“It’s sort of stupid,” JJ sighs. “There’s a guy a few streets over with this dog that gets noisy once in a while. The barking startles me and then I can’t go back to sleep.”

“That’s not stupid,” Emily says.

“Why are you up?”

“I don’t know,” Emily fibs. “There was an X Files marathon on the Sci Fi channel and I guess I lost track of time.” 

“No way, you watch the X Files?” 

“It’s one of my favorites,” Emily chuckles. “If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m a total nerd.”

“When I was in high school, I had a pet rabbit named Scully,” JJ says. “I can nerd pretty hard too.” 

“I don’t suppose you want to come over and watch a couple episodes?”

Twenty minutes later, there is a quiet knock at the door. Emily answers it. JJ is in leggings and an oversized sweat shirt. Her hair is damp and emits a delicate waft of vanilla and orchid shampoo. The fragrance floats around Emily like a song. 

They sit close to one another on the couch and watch Mulder and Scully chase bad guys, and at some point, they both fall asleep.


	6. Five: Blush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please comment. . . I love to hear from readers and am so very grateful.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” JJ chides. She’s stopped in front of Spencer's desk and he’s staring up at her. 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.” Spencer brushes his own hair off his face in an awkward gesture and looks down at his lap. 

“It’s okay. I’m joking.” JJ giggles and leans against his desk. He looks back up at her. He knits his brows, but his lips play in a weird grin. “Seriously. What are you looking at, Spence?” 

“You. I don’t know. You look. . . different somehow?” 

“Oh yeah?” JJ does a little twirl in front of his desk and flips her hair off her shoulder. “Well I did cut my hair last week. I’m thinking of getting bangs. What do you think?”

“No. That’s not it. I can’t quite put my finger on it. You look like you have something going on in your head that no one else knows about.”

“Huh?” JJ raises her eyebrows. “Sounds dubious.” 

“Well, it’s not a bad thing,” Spencer says. He taps his pen against his notebook and leans back in his chair. “You actually look happy.” He pauses and swallows, then adds, “Really happy."

JJ’s heart speeds up inside her chest. What could Spencer possibly know? What is there to know? She stills her breath. Surely there is nothing to know. “Happiness is always good, right?” 

“Absolutely,” Spencer says. “It is definitely a becoming look on you, JJ. And after what we’ve been through, we all deserve a little more happiness, however we can get it.” 

“Thanks, Spence,” she says. Her lips stretch into a smile and she doesn’t really care anymore that she’s blushing. She’s not really embarrassed, because there is not really anything about which she should feel embarrassed. She knows Spencer will leave it there, won’t press her for details of her happiness. Even if he did ask her, would she be able to describe to him why she’s had a little spring in her step every morning coming into work? Would she even be able to tell him about the way she scans the radio for certain songs because they make her think of certain things, and when she thinks of certain things, she feels in ways that warm her up in parts of her body she did not know would ever feel warm. 

“Oh, she’s not in yet,” Spencer says.

“What?” His words have startled her.

“You keep looking over at Agent Prentiss’ desk. She had a personal appointment this morning and is going to be late.” He’s smiling almost slyly, but to be sly would be mean, and Spencer is never mean. What could he even know that would make him sly? Surely, nothing. 

“Oh, I wasn’t looking for her, I mean, I didn’t,” JJ fumbles. She looks down at the file in her hands and tries to pretend it suddenly demands every iota of her attention. She feels her face burning, furiously hot. “I uh, gotta get these to Hotch,” she mumbles. 

Spencer pushes his chair back from his desk and stands. He puts a hand on JJ’s arm. She looks up at him and blinks. “Hey,” he says. His voice is soft. “It’s okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Happiness is a good thing in whatever form it takes.” 

“Spence, I don’t know what it is. I mean. I don’t even know if. . .” Her heart is racing. It is not even in her body anymore. It is halfway across the bullpen. 

“It’s okay,” Spencer says again. He squeezes her arm lightly. He nods at her. “Breathe.”

“Okay,” JJ repeats and smiles. She inhales and exhales. “Okay.” 

“Yup,” he says. 

“Thanks Spence.” 

“Anytime.” He says. She starts to walk towards Hotch’s office. “Oh and JJ? When you blush like that? That also looks really special.” She turns back to see that he is smiling as he says this.


	7. Six: Sticky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am so grateful to everyone who is commenting on this story. You guys are amazing... xoxo.

“Who knew New Orleans was going to be so freaking hot?” JJ says. She fans herself with her hand. 

“Um, pretty much everyone knows that. It is actually sort of shocking that you didn’t naturally assume it would be sweltering down here,” Emily says with a half smile. 

“Well, this humidity is awful,” she moans. “And it is making my hair insane.”

“Who are you kidding? Your hair still looks great. At least you haven’t resorted to the high pony tail, like me.” Emily rolls her eyes up toward her hairline. “I’m going to get a soda from the machine. You want one?” 

“Sure,” JJ nods and looks back down at the file she is working on. Emily walks out to the hall of the police station from the space they have made into their make shift situation room. She finds the soda machine and feeds it a few of her least crumpled dollars. She pushes the button twice and down the chute slide two diet colas. She brings them back into the room and hands one to JJ. Without looking up, JJ says “Thanks,” and starts to open the bottle. Without any warning a spray of soda explodes as soon as she twists the cap halfway around the neck of the bottle. Instantly, she shoves her chair back and stands up. She holds the bottle away from her, but it is no use. Brown liquid is fizzing out like a fountain. “No!” She cries. 

“Oh my gosh, JJ! I’m so sorry!” Emily races toward her with a wad of Kleenex she grabs off a desk. “Shit, it’s everywhere!” 

“No kidding,” JJ whines. “Oh, my god, my shirt is destroyed.” She looks down to find that her previously pristine, white blouse is now spattered with soda. “Gross.” She shakes soda off of her fingers and then dabs at her neck. "I don't have time to go back to the hotel to change. This is horrible!"

Emily sucks her lips into her mouth and tries not to laugh at the adorably shocked and angry face JJ is making. “You’re going to be all sticky,” she finally manages. JJ looks up at her, at first in a state of horror, but then she also realizes the hilarity of the situation and starts to laugh. Her laughter allows Emily to release the pent up guffaw she had been stifling herself. “Hey, I have a spare tee shirt in my bag if you wanna change. You’re more than welcome to borrow it.”

“Oh, Em, that would be amazing. Yes. Thank you!” 

In the women’s locker room of the police station JJ unbuttons her blouse and peels it off of her body. She wets some paper towels and tries to wipe off the caramel-colored mess on her chest. “Here you go,” Emily says and holds out a wine colored shirt. “Not really your color, but at least it is dry, right?” 

“Absolutely,” JJ says and lowers the paper towel from her cleavage. “Did I get it all?” She asks. Emily’s eyes scan the delicate, pale landscape of JJ’s décolletage and over the lace covered peaks of her breasts. She swallows and nods. JJ tosses the grubby paper towel into the trash can and reaches for the shirt that Emily is still holding out. As she takes it, her hand finds Emily’s and lingers on it for just a moment. “Thanks again, Em. You’re a real lifesaver.” 

“Uh, as someone who has legitimately saved a life, I can confidently say that lending you a shirt is hardly saving a life,” Emily stutters as she runs her finger over JJ’s knuckle. “But you’re most welcome. Anytime.” She clears her throat. The heat of New Orleans seems to have suddenly dried her throat and she’s craving the beverage she left back in the situation room. JJ pulls her hand away and puts the shirt on. She spends a moment in the mirror adjusting her hair and checking her makeup. “So, that detective? Will? He’s sort of cute.” Emily offers. 

“Mmmh. Yeah? You think so?” JJ turns around and looks straight into Emily’s eyes. Emily finds herself averting her own hazel gaze from the brightness of JJ’s beaming blue. 

“I mean, sure. Don’t you?” 

JJ lowers her voice and takes a step toward Emily. “To be honest, he’s not really my type, Em. But I think you knew that. And I think you knew that I know he’s not your type either.” Her face is calm, almost unreadable. She squeezes the top of Emily’s arm, then walks past her, out of the locker room.


	8. Seven: You Knew That I Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A follow up to the previous chapter, in which Prentiss contemplates the locker room scene while she is alone. . . in her hotel room. This chapter is a little more low-key rated M, so consider yourself warned if that isn't your thing. 
> 
> And a HUGE thank you to everyone who is leaving kudos and comments. OMG you have no clue how much that makes my entire day so, so very sweet. xoxoxo.

The words pulsate in her mind. Her words.

The words pulsate in the dark of her hotel room, but from far away, and in a silent way, like a star.

Emily can’t sleep.

Hotel rooms. They all smell the same. Sterile, bleached, sanitary. It is a scent Emily has come to like. Hell, it’s a scent she even looks forward to after the sweat and blood and gore of the chase and death and brutality. It is a smell that comforts her.

But not tonight.

On the bed, she tosses and kicks. She’s dressed lightly in a tee shirt and underpants, but she’s not comfortable. Even under just the sheet, and even with the AC cranked up as high as she can make it go, she’s restless. She’s heated. She kicks the sheet off herself and the pure smell of the hotel room is sullied by the smell of her own desire. She blushes. Even in the darkness and even alone, she is embarrassed by the aroma of her want, her need, the ache she has carried low in her abdomen since JJ walked out of the locker room earlier that day.

_I think you knew that I know he’s not your type either._

JJ’s words pulsate in the velvety, gray corridors of Emily’s mind. They throb in steady repetition until they cease to make sense. She rolls them around like beads, and then strings them with thoughts of her own.

_I think you knew. . ._

_But she can’t know. She couldn’t have meant anything by it. How could she know? Have I been so transparent?_

Emily’s hand has found itself between her legs. She bites her lower lip until she tastes blood when she feels the slippery slope of her arousal. She doesn’t like to do this to herself. She hates how much she needs it. She moves her hips in rhythm to the memory of JJ’s voice, low, conspiratorial. _I think you knew that I know_. . . Her heart speeds up to catch the train of that thought. That single thought. _You knew._ . . Blood rushes to her cheeks, her chest, her neck in a royal flush. She’s almost as mortified as if JJ were watching her, as if she were standing right there at the side of the bed, dark eyes glittering in the night, looking down at Emily as she squirms under her own fingers. Her eyes have been squeezed tight. She opens them to nothing but darkness.

“Fuck,” she whispers and rolls over onto her stomach. She rides her hand, wanting it to be fast and over, wanting a moment of relief. Mashing her face into the pillow, she inhales the hotel linen’s non-aroma and thinks she’d give a tooth without any anesthesia for a single waft of JJ’s perfume right now. The hand that isn’t between her thighs clutches at the pillow as she tries to imagine it is the breast of the other woman. She visualizes the dove like softness, christened with lace. “Oh god,” she moans. “I know. I know.” She releases against her hand, then rolls again onto her back and floats on the waves in the dark. She looks up as though she looks for stars. The room is so dark. She puts both of her hands on her chest and lies there until her breath stills and she starts to feel sleepy and cold.

She licks her lip, where she bit it, and where she can still taste a tiny metallic tang of blood. Before she falls asleep, and just to see how it sounds, and just to see what it feels like, she opens her mouth. “Jennifer,” she says out loud into the dark hotel room.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. I absolutely LIVE for comments. And I try to respond to everyone, so please feel free to reach out and say hey. xoxoxo.


End file.
